March 5, 1970
Page 6147
VIETNAM – ADDRESS BY SENATOR MUSKIE
Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, at the National Press Club today, the Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) gave a most thoughtful and timely address entitled "The Vietnam Debate." As always, the tenor is of the highest level, the thoughts presented are carefully reasoned, and the proposals fully constructive.
I commend this address to the entire Senate.
I ask unanimous consent that the address be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
THE VIETNAM DEBATE
(By Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE)
Since the election of President Nixon in November, 1968, and especially since the President's speech of November 3, 1969, United States policy toward Vietnam has been transformed in the public mind from the most critical issue of the times to just another policy problem.
It was understandable that the American people wanted to give a new President a chance to study the problem on his own and come up with a solution. It was understandable that we were pleased with the withdrawal of some U.S. troops and the prospect of further withdrawals. But now we must face the fact that we have stopped debating Vietnam policy, but in the year since President Nixon took office we have recorded the deaths of over 10,000 American servicemen, the wounding of 40,000 more, and the expenditure of another $20 billion.
With ambiguous promises, with thinly veiled threats to freedom of the press, and with carefully spaced withdrawal announcements, the Nixon Administration succeeded in virtually blotting out domestic criticism of the war and erasing Vietnam from public consciousness.
Many Americans now believe or seem to want to believe that the Vietnam problem has gone away. Many Americans who know that there is much to debate have been reluctant to voice their doubts and reservations. They look at present policy as an improvement on past policy, and they hope for the best.
Without information and without alternatives, it is no wonder that a majority of American people are now silent.
I do not believe the silence will continue, and I believe the longer the debate is bottled up, the more serious will be the ultimate confrontation over Vietnam.
Therefore, I came to the National Press Club today to talk about the need for a constructive debate on Vietnam and to urge changes in our Vietnam policy.
I believe the following points need to be made:
First, those of us in public office and the news media have not been effectively focusing public attention on the policy issues in Vietnam. Because of this, the American people have not been made aware of the meaning of the President’s policy and of the alternatives to that policy.
Second, I believe that what the President calls his "silent majority" is silent only because it has not been made to realize that although some U.S. troops will be coming home, we are not really getting out of Vietnam.
Third, I believe that the President's Vietnamization policy can be only a formula for the perpetuation of the war. Because it is basically a strategy for continuing the fighting, it cannot bring peace to Vietnam and it cannot get us out of Vietnam.
Fourth, I believe that an end to the war and an end to our involvement in the war can be brought about only through a negotiated settlement. There are peace proposals that the President has not tried. By his preoccupation with Vietnamizing the war, the President has turned his back on Paris. By letting almost four months go by without sending a senior personal representative to Paris he has downgraded negotiations.
Fifth, for all these reasons, our nation must have a new national debate on Vietnam policy. There can be no debate for the people unless public figures are prepared to speak out and unless the news media are prepared to listen, report, and comment.
THE ROLE OF THE NEWS MEDIA
Over the last eight years, the news media have proven to be the most consistently reliable guide to facts and to understanding the war. No matter how honest the purposes of any Administration, it does have a vested interest in making the facts fit its policies. And no matter how hard it tries to ferret out divergent opinions and additional facts, a government is bound up with its own reporting system.
People in the government have learned the necessity of supplementing "official reporting."
President Nixon has cited his need for "out-house" sources of information. What the President feels as a need, the public must have as an absolute requirement.
In Vietnam, newsmen dug up facts we did not hear from any other source. They probed beyond the facts to judgments about the meaning of events and programs and sought out varied points of view. We learned from all this the human price of the war and how little progress was really being made. In short, these efforts provided a basis for public evaluation.
In Washington, and around our country, we were made aware of imprecisions, ambiguities, and contradictions about U.S. policies. The news media kept alternatives to the President's policy very much before the public mind. Time and space were provided for the public to digest these alternatives. In short, these efforts gave a basis for public comparison.
But today we are getting much less than we require for informed public opinion on Vietnam.
It is not difficult to reconstruct how this happened. Vice President Agnew's attempts at intimidation set the stage. Hints about license renewal problems appeared here and there. Statements were made by "high Administration officials" from time to time that every possible solution has been tried. Implications were left that Nixon's policy will deliver more tomorrow.
The President launched a campaign to convince the American people that the only alternative to his policy is "precipitate withdrawal."
The result has been less news coverage and less coverage in depth.
The recent hearings on Vietnam resolutions conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee seem to me a typical example. In past hearings by this committee, the TV networks gave full live coverage or news specials. This time, the public saw only a few minutes at most. In fact, Vice President Agnew's wisecracks about the hearings received almost as much attention on TV and in the papers as did the hearings themselves.
And whatever happened to the immediate in depth analysis that used to follow every Vietnam statement by President Johnson? Has the Vice President's attack against "instant analysis" produced non-analysis?
What the President keeps referring to as his "silent majority" may well be the product of too silent a press.
While public opinion polls tell us that a majority of Americans think the President is handling Vietnam policy adequately, these polls also tell us that Americans have different views of what they are supporting. Many of the silent supporters believe that the President intends to get all U.S. forces out of Vietnam – and soon. This is not the case, but this knowledge has not been adequately conveyed to the American people. The press has contributed to misapprehensions about our Vietnam policies by reducing reasoned alternatives to a few pat news phrases.
The facts and alternatives of Vietnam policy are exceedingly complex. The President can command all the air time and all the newspaper space he wants to explain his views. Those who disagree with him can be heard by the American public only if the news media provides the opportunity.
I am not trying to drum up press criticism for its own sake. For the sake of the public's right to know, I am asking for more probing, for more facts, for more coverage whatever the results may be.
I am not trying to make a party issue out of Vietnam. It cannot be done and it should not be done. Both Democrats and Republicans were involved in getting us into Vietnam, and both Democrats and Republicans are interested in getting out.
I want to encourage a constructive national debate on United States policy on Vietnam. President Nixon equates national debate with national disunity. He says the U.S. can be defeated only by disunity at home. I grant that the absence of national debate may make it temporarily more comfortable for Mr. Nixon, but I do not believe it can advance the cause of peace in Vietnam. In the end, absence of debate can lead only to increased divisions and ugly confrontations.
WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT'S PLAN?
The full implications of the President's plan for Vietnamizing the war remain a mystery.
Backgrounders and statements by high officials in the Nixon Administration have continued to offer hope to many that the plan was to get all of our men out of Vietnam in accordance with our own interest. However, the President at his January 30 press conference made clear that this was not the case.
"We had implemented a plan in which the United States would withdraw all of its combat forces as Vietnamese forces were trained and able to take over the fighting.
"That policy of Vietnamization is irreversible.
"Now, as far as the timing of the plan is concerned, how many and at what time they come out, that, of course, will depend on the criteria that I also set forth in that speech – the criteria of the level of enemy activity, the progress in the Paris peace talks, and, of course, the other matters, the problems particularly with regard to the rate of training of the Vietnamese forces."
What does this now tell us about the plan? First, the plan has two parts – the removal of combat forces from Vietnam and the maintaining in Vietnam of "support for the South Vietnamese logistically, and until they are ready to take over ...”
Second, the plan appears to relate primarily to ground combat forces. We still do not know what this means in numbers of men and timing. Conjecture seems to put the figure at about 300,000 which would mean at least 200,000 Americans left in Vietnam by the end of 1971 if all goes well.
Third, this is an optimistic conjecture, since the timing of both parts of the plan is not based on our own interests, but on the actions of Saigon and Hanoi. Leaving aside the Paris negotiations for the moment, this means that if Hanoi maintains or steps up the pressure and Saigon cannot hold its own, even our combat forces will remain indefinitely.
Why hasn't all this been made clear to the American people?
The silent majority would be silent no longer if this fact and this fact alone were brought to their attention. Silent Americans are assuming that Mr. Nixon is really getting us out of Vietnam. The truth of the matter is that he is pinning us down indefinitely. We have been told that Mr. Nixon’s plan has been cleared with President Thieu, and President Thieu appears to be well aware of our indefinite commitment. On January 9, Thieu warned that "many years" will be required to remove U.S. combat troops.
President Nixon seems to believe that the U.S. has a vital national security interest in keeping Thieu and Ky in power. I do not believe the American people share this objective.
WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM VIETNAMIZATION?
Can it work in Vietnam? Will it bring us closer to peace in Paris?
The North Vietnamese and the Vietcong have been hurt by the years of war, but they show no signs of being near a breaking point. They have been fighting for 25 years to throw western military influence out of Vietnam. Can we realistically expect them to give up this goal? And on the battlefield, they can still control the level of combat, and nothing in Mr. Nixon's plan takes this away from them.
The South Vietnamese forces have improved over the years, but this improvement also serves to point up how far they have to go. They still avoid night patrolling. Their officer corps is still widely regarded as incompetent. Promotions to officer rank are still based on social status.
Desertions still run as high as 10,000 per month. This figure incidentally is just an educated estimate. And behind all this still lies a political regime which neither deserves nor receives much popular support. With all the claims we make that 90 percent of the population of the hamlets are "pacified," roughly half the hamlets are still classified as subject to significant Vietcong influence. Even at this stage of the war, the Saigon Government has no meaningful control of half of its own country. Neutralists and anyone else who speaks out against the present Saigon regime are still being jailed and hounded, while we stand silently aside. The recent incident involving Deputy Chau is only the latest example of the failure of the Thieu regime to observe democratic processes.
We should also note the continued sentiment for a peaceful settlement among the several groups in South Vietnam. In the 1967 elections which brought Thieu to power, 60 percent of those who did vote cast their ballots for some form of accommodation for peace.
The Nixon Administration looks at this and says it is "cautiously optimistic" It has its statistics about open roads, and rice production, and pacification and so on. I am not talking about the success of an American occupation, but the underlying and controlling elements of the war. These have not changed, and they do not make me "cautiously optimistic."
If we look at Laos today and magnify that situation many times, we can get a pretty good picture of what Vietnamization will look like in five or ten years – if everything goes perfectly. Without a political settlement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia the fighting will persist in Laos, and we will be always on the verge of crisis, and American participation always will be necessary and irreplaceable.
The cruel irony of Vietnamization of the war is that even if it succeeds as a military strategy it succeeds only in perpetuating the killing of Vietnamese by Vietnamese. And by so doing, it perpetuates American involvement in the war, American deaths, and the diversion of needed American resources.
The President's plan cannot bring peace because it is essentially a military strategy intended to win what is primarily a political struggle.
High Nixon Administration officials sometimes say that these long-run political problems will not have to be faced because Vietnamization will lead to successful negotiations in Paris. They say that our policy is to appear tough and demonstrate our staying power, thereby putting pressure on Hanoi to negotiate seriously in Paris. In my judgment, however, the strategy of threatening a prolonged U.S. presence is self-defeating.
As directed at Hanoi, it promises little hope that their supporters in South Vietnam can be safe in their lives or could genuinely participate in the political life of their country. Mr. Nixon merely threatens them with more force, and a continuing American military veto.
To Saigon, we have promised much in the way of continuing military and political support, but we have conveyed little warning that American military support will not continue forever and that reasonable political concessions on their part are necessary if there is to be an end to the war.
Given the prospect of our indefinite stay in Vietnam, Saigon has no incentive either to improve militarily or to bargain away its own power at the peace table. In order to maintain itself in power, the Thieu-Ky regime has every incentive to help make our stay indefinite.
In my judgment, nothing the President threatens to do in Vietnam and nothing he has done in Paris is likely to result in successful negotiations. Serious bargaining is precluded so long as both Saigon and Hanoi believe that our real aim is to stay in Vietnam indefinitely and preserve the Thieu-Ky regime.
In disregarding the Paris negotiations, the President is making his most fundamental mistake.
THE PARIS NEGOTIATIONS – TOWARD A SETTLEMENT
The only way to end a war which is intrinsically a political struggle is through negotiations. In order to bring Paris back into the picture and improve the chances for a peaceful settlement, the President must take two steps he has not taken.
First, he must replace Ambassador Lodge with another senior personal representative and close the symbolic but important protocol gap.
This seems like a small step, but the North Vietnamese are not unique in their concern for diplomatic niceties, and they are not indifferent to matters of general international courtesy. Le Duc Tho, Xuan Thuy and Madame Binh from North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government respectively outrank Ambassador Phillip Habib and any member of the South Vietnamese delegation by several levels. As a negotiator, Mr. Habib's obvious ability cannot compensate for his obvious unacceptability.
The protocol gap has crucial practical consequences. Our delegation to negotiations must have recognized authority to probe the other side's position, to command the attention of the President, and to propose needed and sensible compromises. We should also insist that Saigon upgrade its team in Paris.
A new senior man in Paris is the necessary first step in recreating a serious atmosphere for diplomacy.
Second, the President must develop a proposal that is negotiable, a proposal which will create the necessary climate for a settlement of those differences. Specifically, I have in mind our trying to negotiate a U.S. withdrawal timetable, and coupling this with an informal arrangement regarding. the withdrawal of North Vietnam forces and a reduction in the level of violence.
There is some reason to believe that Hanoi would be receptive to such an approach. But the Administration has been reluctant to probe possible changes in Hanoi's position. Such probing, we are told, would be regarded by Hanoi as a sign of American weakness. This is simply another illustration of how Vietnamization has become a roadblock, not a path to peace.
This brings us to the issue of an announced withdrawal timetable.
President Nixon says that he has a withdrawal plan, and that Saigon knows and agrees with it.
However, he refuses to make it known to the American public. If Saigon knows, then Hanoi is also informed. Only the American people remain unfamiliar with the details.
He says if he announces a timetable, Hanoi will wait until we are vulnerable and then attack us.
But Hanoi can wait and do this at a time and place of its own choosing, whether or not Mr. Nixon announces a timetable.
He says that an announced timetable would take away Hanoi's incentive to compromise. We have been in Paris for over a year and a half, and it is obvious that Hanoi finds no incentives for compromise in our present policy.
All this leads me to conclude that we are still following the endless path to an unreachable military victory, and that the Paris peace negotiations have become the forgotten chapter of the war in Vietnam.
In conclusion, I think we come to three points.
First, because American and Vietnamese lives continue to be lost and because billions of American dollars continue to be spent, a new national debate is in order.
Second, because I believe the President's Vietnamization policy can lead only to the prolongation of the war and because I believe a real end to the war can come only through negotiations, a new national debate is a necessity.
And, finally, because the issues demand the understanding attention of the American public, the role of the press in faithfully reporting this national debate is indispensable.